Blizzard on Hard to see Item Drops

Posted By: January 22, 2010

A fan brought up the issue of players sometimes missing good drops in the litter of junk that falls constantly, and got a couple of replies from Bashiok:

Diablo was always about loot. Tones of loot lying on the ground. Sometimes you just can’t see your drop and continuing moving forward. So I think showing legendaries, sets, rares, runes, etc on the map will help a lot. Or/and adding some cool sound on their drop

Bashiok: Can you elaborate? What specifically would cause you to not be able to see a drop?

Cause there’s too much crap on the ground! Later in the same thread, another fan pointed out that sometimes monsters died off the screen from arrows or spells, and got this “work in progress” comment from Bashiok:

I need to hit someone up about projectiles because they don’t cause damage if they’re not on your screen. And that raises all sorts of fun questions. I don’t believe it will or could function that way in PvP situations obviously, but how does that work for co-op?

Maybe that’s a good question for BlizzCast!?!? Not really.

As for why players miss drops, there’s a section on that from my old v1.09 Javazon Guide, with a useful screenshot (below). As anyone who has participated in 8-player cow runs or Baal’s Minion slaughters can testify, there’s often way too much stuff on the ground for every item to show a hover tag.

Back in v1.09 I sometimes amused myself by violating the slaughterhouse heaps of corpses in the Cow Level with an MF Barb, and I’d routinely find small charms, jewels, unique rings, etc, lying in the litter of loot. Before I even started horking! Happily, this should be less of an issue in Diablo 3, for several reasons: 1) Lower player cap (4 instead of 8). 2) We’ll each see just “our” item drops, rather than everything that falls. 3) Gold is picked up quickly/automatically. 4) Potions are responsible for a lot of the loot spam in D2, and they’re very rare in D3.